Problems Statement
The social environment of a college student requires communication with self-reveals the overall idea of who they are and reflects the view they project in other people’s reactions. It is a continuous process that develops through their interactions with others and their social comparisons to compare behaviors and beliefs to others. Communicating with oneself is a principle of symbolic interactionism theory. Therefore, such communication involves a series of self-talk, visualization of images, acts of imagination, and different episodes of recall and memory.
Self-concept affects how people communicate. The overall idea of who a person thinks they are influences their perception about themselves and determines their mechanisms of passing a message. Thus, intrapersonal communication is the basis of self-esteem and emotional intelligence. A college student who has mastered the art of intrapersonal communication tends to understand their emotions and the people around them. Thus, this is critical because it helps them navigate their relationships, manage themselves, and make decisions that align with their social and cultural context.
This paper will focus on the following questions. What efforts should college students make to develop their internal communication processes to enhance their self-esteem and interpretation of messages?
The context in communication is relevant in analyzing the topic of self and messages. It is imperative to understand how interactions with context determine college students’ judgment and evaluations about their self-concept. Therefore, the interplay between intrapersonal communication and self-esteem among college students draws from the basic components of the communication process. Such components include the receiver, the source of the message, the challenge, the message itself, environment, feedback, context, and interference. Primarily, all the interactions of intrapersonal communication occur within an individual.
Literature Review
Intrapersonal communication embodies the internal systems of communicating with oneself. Scholars have expanded the scope of communicating with oneself to cover different mental traits, cognitive behavior, knowledge, association, and comparisons (West, Turner, and Zhao 2010). The study sought to identify the general model of social behavior in generating the message through text analysis. The principles of symbolic interactionism theory show that intrapersonal communication embodies the internal processes of interpreting messages from others, engaging in self-evaluation, self-discovery, and self-delusion tactics, and determining perception goals (Alemoh 2019). Symbols in the social-cultural environment create a connection in the formation of self and exchange of messages. College students use internal communication processes to understand who they are. As a result, they rely on others to reflect their self-concept.
The social paradigm that explains intrapersonal communication aligns with symbolic interactionism theory. The micro-level framework focuses on the relationship that college students make within society. Stryker (2017) underscores that communication involves the exchange of meaning through symbols and languages. All these influence the perception of the self by making people draw meaning from their social worlds. Theorists Herman and Reynold opined that such a framework confirms that people are active participants in their social context (Stryker 2017). The core principle of social interactionism theory is meaning, language, and thought. Applying symbolic interactionist thinking helps to address patterns of interaction among college students.
Symbolic interactionism theory establishes an approach that is critical to understanding the human process. The theory contents that humans interpret symbols and assign meaning to events through a set of symbols (Fernback 2019). The meaning of these symbols has been evolving through human interactions. In most cases, the interactions determine the notion of people about self and society. Therefore, as the concepts of self-emerge through an interactive communication process, it is imperative to observe people create social words and sustain their different interactions. Analysis of the society using the descriptive meaning informs the interaction between objects, behavior, and events. The natural observation study revealed that social interactionism provides a model for understanding how people interpret symbols and assign meaning through interaction with others (West, Turner, and Zhao 2010). Although the study acknowledges the blend between different levels of communication, it maintains that people will use descriptive meaning to determine their behavioral patterns. The theory assumes that people develop complicated sets of symbols that give meaning to their perspectives and worldviews. The meanings rest in their interaction with society (Van Raalte, Vincent, and Dickens 2019). The applicability of this is that people interpret the meaning subjectively to suit their meaning based on the existing symbols. As a result, the interaction that models symbols tends to create social structures. For this reason, symbolic interactionism articulates the desire of an individual to create a sense of self-identity and self-esteem through their interactions with their environments.
Self-esteem is a reflection of an individual image. Communication processes create pathways that allow a person to label themselves. Thus, the different labels include self-esteem, self-concept, self-evaluation, and self-image (West, Turner, and Zhao 2010). According to Stryker (2017), context and social-cultural environment play a leading role in shaping perception. A person thinks about themselves depending on their situation at that moment. Most of the time, the situations inform personal characteristics such as personality, abilities, and other distinguishing features. Also, the concept of a person is formed through their interaction with others.
A symbolic interactionist model of human communication depicts the role of interpersonal elements in developing the image of self. The approach suggests that individuals prescribe meaning to symbols and languages. Different people react to the same symbol and message depending on how they have constructed their self-image (Fernback 2019). Research indicates that symbolic interactionism explains how the differences in interpreting a message occur based on how people attach various meanings to their worlds and symbols (West, Turner, and Zhao 2010). The theory operates on the premise that human behavior aligns with subjective interpretation of an individual’s environment. Such an environment contains symbols whose meaning originates from social interaction. Therefore, words, people, objects, and self-concept function as symbols that determine intrapersonal communication.
The principles and assumptions of symbolic interactionism theory are divergent. The approach focuses on three primary elements of communication that include language, thought, and meaning. Although meaning is not inherent in symbols, people can modify and construct it within a different context and social interactions (Van Raalte, Vincent, and Dickens 2019). The human ability to analyze the point of view of others and interpret symbols to allow for the emergence of meaning. It is through such meaning that a person shapes their self-concept and develops behavior that sustains their self-esteem. In contrast, the ability of a human to interact requires their mechanisms to understand each other. For this reason, a language is a symbolic tool that functions to enhance the concept of self.
The perception of self is a social identity that determines personal interaction and human behavior. Naturalistic observations have revealed that individuals who communicate create a language that reflects their worldview (West, Turner, and Zhao 2010). The implication of this theory to understanding communication in everyday life shows that intrapersonal communication establishes social identity through consistent patterns of behavior. Through interactions, such individuals assign specific meaning to the symbols they have created in society (West, Turner, and Zhao 2010). Therefore, the ability for college students to use symbolic language to illustrate their social environment determines how they establish social expectations for behavior and enhance their self-esteem.
References
Alemoh, T. A. (2019). Fundamental Issues in Conceptualizing Intra-Personal Communication. NTAtvc Journal of Communication, 3(2), 148-154.
Fernback, J (2019). Symbolic Interactionism in Communication. Retrieved from https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756841/obo-9780199756841-0232.xml
Stryker, S. (2017). Symbolic interactionism: Themes and variations. In Social psychology (pp. 3-29). Routledge.
Van Raalte, J. L., Vincent, A., & Dickens, Y. L. (2019). Dialogical consciousness and descriptive experience sampling: Implications for the study of intrapersonal communication in sport. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 653.
West, R. L., Turner, L. H., & Zhao, G. (2010). Introducing communication theory: Analysis and application (Vol. 2). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
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